Former Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and onetime Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville were neck-and-neck in the Republican primary race for Senate on Tuesday night and likely headed for a runoff.
Sessions had 32.5 percent of the vote, while Tuberville had 30.8 percent of the vote, with 71 percent in.
“I will fight for Alabama every day and we will win the Republican nomination on March 31,” Sessions told a crowd of supporters on Tuesday night. He argued that he was a proven and vetted supporter of President Donald Trump and said Tuberville would be further vetted during the next phase of this race.
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They are trailed by three-term GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne, who has 27.3 percent of the vote, while 6.8 percent of voters had cast ballots for Roy Moore, the 2018 Republican candidate who lost amid allegations that he’d had improper sexual contact with young girls. Moore won’t make the runoff, NBC projects.
The race will likely proceed to a March run-off race if none of the candidates win majority support in the crowded primary, before the winner goes up against Democrat Sen. Doug Jones, who won the seat in a 2017 special election and is considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate.
Once the state’s popular senior senator, Sessions left the job to become President Donald Trump’s attorney general. But the president soured on his attorney general when Sessions recused himself from the Russia probe and the president ousted Sessions from the job the day after the midterm elections in November.
Trump has trashed Sessions — calling “biggest mistake” of his presidency and criticizing his leadership as attorney general. Trump allies even warned Sessions that the president would campaign against him if he ran, though the president has so far stayed silent.
The candidates didn’t stay silent on Trump, though: the president has a 62 percent approval rating here and the Senate primary revolved around who was more committed to the president.
Sessions ran as his “No. 1 supporter,” and boasted that he was an early endorser.
Tuberville, who rose to prominence leading Auburn to a slew of titles over a decade, adopted a Trump-like political persona in his bid. He did a bus tour and called it “The People vs. The Swamp Tour,” and he derides “fake news.”
